It is so relevant to all business owners. Pat had 15 successful entrepreneur friends of his record interviews for him and asked the question: “What is the one thing you wish you’d known before starting your own business?” They all share their own perspectives in their answers. All of the answers are super beneficial and powerful, for any entrepreneurs, but especially for those who are thinking about starting or just starting out.

I’m not going to summarize everything that’s in the episode (you’ll have to listen to the whole episode to get everything, which I highly recommend you do!) Like I said, all 15 are powerful and valuable. But for the sake of this blog post, I will share just 5 of my takeaways that particularly hit home for me.

1) Focus on quality over quantity when building your list

This takeaway came from what was shared by Scott Voelker of The Amazing Seller. I didn’t even know what building a list meant when I first got started online, let alone how important it was to do it! Not building a list was my first mistake, but after I realized it, I spent hours and money to build a big list, only to find out my list wasn’t very useful to me! Quantity didn’t matter when the quality was horrible. Not realizing that was another mistake I made.

Scott shares that spending more time learning about your market and creating good content that your audience wants is super important, rather than just going after numbers. Knowing and really understanding your customers or prospects is super powerful. He says that your list will help you create more focused content, and in return they will tell you what they want so you can provide them with solutions and answers to what they want and become your raving fans! This is super valuable for me, as I’m still on the way to creating a quality list.

2) Harness the power of concentrated, focused effort

This concept was shared by Steve Scott from Authority Pub. I’ve lacked this for a long time. As I have shared before, I suffered from “shiny object syndrome” and my focus was often no focus – I was all over the place. I think lack of focus really set me back years! I would have been further ahead of the game by now if I had concentrated and focused my effort.

This can especially be a challenge in this day and age with social media, because we often feel like we have to be everywhere at once! It is tempting to try every single one, for sure. But, if you don’t have focus you will spread yourself too thin. I have!

Steve recommends sitting down and identifying your 80/20: meaning focus on the 20% of activities that will generate 80% of your results. And he recommends doing it first thing in the morning. Do that one task before you do anything else – write the blog post, post something on Youtube, create your product, etc. Whatever it is that needs your greatest focus for the day, be consistent and concentrated in focusing your effort!

He also recommends the following 3 books to read for more on this topic:

One thing by Gary keller

Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

3) Build your business upon your gift

This takeaway was shared by Dana Malstaff of Boss-Mom.com. Dana has been a huge help in strategizing my business and helping me take it to the next level. This is something that stirred my thinking and gave me my “aha’ moment. Having a passion for your business is super important, but using your gift – what you are good at, what comes easily and naturally to you that might not come so easily to others – is equally important. She says you should build your business on your gifts, not only on your passion. Hone in on your gifts, and use them to your advantage to grow your business. When you combine your passion with your gifts, you will have so much fun in your business you will never have to work a day in your life! Take time to determine what your gifts are, and then combine them with passion to grow your business – brilliant!!

4) Build relationships for the long haul

This concept was shared by Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner. Yes!! I so completely agree with him. Without relationships, we have no business. Going into online marketing, people tend to think they don’t need to talk to anyone. That’s a huge myth. Online or offline, business is built on relationships. He says, “Be a student of people, go out of your way to help them, give them value, invest in people without expecting anything in return.” Besides the important point of “building relationships” the key here is “without expecting anything in return.” We, in human nature, tend to think “what’s in it for me?” What he says here is to provide value and build a relationship with NO strings attached.

5) Focus on Creating Value and Helping People, Not on Money.

This was shared by Mark Mason from Late Night Internet Marketing. Lots of people start businesses online because they want to supplement their income, are fed up with their 9-5 job or want to get out of the situation they are in and their goal is fixed on money. He says “You can’t make it all about money. When you focus on money, you end up just finding tips, strategy, techniques, etc for extracting money from people – that’s backwards! You need to be in the business of creating massive value and helping people. When you focus on helping people, money will follow.” I couldn’t agree more!

Pat Flynn also shared how he failed businesses because his frame of mind was fixed on money, but when he is in business to help people, his business grew and thus money followed.

As I mentioned before, these are just 5 out of 15 awesome tips these successful entrepreneurs shared! Scott Voelker said this on the podcast: “The key is not just consuming this information, but to consume it and take action.” That’s right, folks! Knowing what to do, technical stuff, what to say, etc is all well and good, but if we don’t take action, they are worth nothing! Oh, how I know that so well!!!

I hope you take your time to listen to this episode. I got a ton of value from listening to it, and I hope I was able to pass some along to you in this article:)